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Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

Milton and Rose Friedman explain and advocate for free markets. A classic text by 1976 Nobel in Economics prize-winner Milton Friedman and his wife Rose.

Excerpt: “The fecundity of freedom is demonstrated most dramatically and clearly in agriculture. When the Declaration of Independence was enacted, fewer than 3 million persons of European and African origin (i.e., omitting the native Indians) occupied a narrow fringe along the eastern coast. Agriculture was the main economic activity. It took nineteen out of twenty workers to feed the country’s inhabitants and provide a surplus for export in exchange for foreign goods. Today [1980] it takes fewer than one out of twenty workers to feed the 220 million inhabitants and provide a surplus that makes the United States the largest single exporter of food in the world.”

2015: The percentage of workers in the USA in agriculture has fallen from ~5% in 1980 to below 1.5% today, while agriculture output continues to grow and there another 95 million people living in the USA.

Here is a video of Milton on the Phil Donohue show in 1979, asking “What is greed?”